TPTT: fan-fiction set in the Ekcolir Reality. |
Science Fiction Films
SIHA: Search for Interesting Aliens |
1) Recently, the Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens traveled back through time to the 1950s and I had a chance to think about my initial reaction {mind blown} to the film Forbidden Planet and its depiction of the advanced technology of the alien Krell.
Terminus: located at the edge of the galaxy, how does it become the most important planet of the Galactic Empire? |
With those two ideas simultaneously swirling in my mind, I found myself asking some amusing questions, starting with: what if a Foundation movie had been made back in the early 1950s?
As a young man, Asimov was performing his own conceptual juggling when he decided to write a science fiction story about a Galactic Empire with 25,000,000 human-colonized planets. Having read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he decided to create a story about the collapse of a vast Galactic Empire. That decision eventually led to a series of Foundation stories that he sold to pulp Sci Fi magazine editor John Campbell.
Planetary gods. image source |
Terminus Planet
There was a Roman god called Terminus. Here is a line from Gibbon's book: "It was an ancient tradition, that when the Capitol was founded by one of the Roman kings, the god Terminus (who presided over boundaries) alone refused to yield his place to Jupiter himself."
In Asimov's Foundation saga, the planet Terminus becomes the home world of the First Foundation. The first people to live on Terminus are part of a project aimed at preserving all human knowledge and archiving it in advanced of the anticipated collapse of the Empire and subsequent dark age.
agent from Tar'tron |
Terminus was selected as the site of the Encyclopedia Foundation because it was a world located far from the heart of the Empire, a place where physical scientists could begin a new renaissance of scientific advancement after the fall of the old, stagnant Galactic Empire.
A Second Foundation was also established which had its headquarters on the planet Trantor, located in the galactic core. Previously, I've imagined that Trantor was known as Tar'tron in other Realities besides the Foundation Reality.
The ancient Romans had the quaint idea that all roads led the the temple of Terminus in Rome. Similarly, Asimov made it central to his Foundation saga that Trantor was at "Star's End". Asimov imagined a type of psychohistorical symmetry linking Terminus to Trantor by which the last planet settled by humans (Terminus) would inevitably become the Capitol of a new galactic empire.
Map of some Roman provinces including Asia. Smyrna was an important Roman era city on the west coast of Asia. |
I like to imagine that when he was creating his stories about the early years of human settlement of Terminus and the struggle of the Foundation to survive during times of anarchy, Asimov must have been imagining plot elements by thinking in analogy to a more peripheral part of the ancient Roman world than Asia.
Terminus was close to the Province of Anacreon, far out in the galactic periphery. Anacreon Province splintered into the Four Kingdoms after the Galactic Empire went into decline.
The four Kingdoms of Ireland. |
How I imagine Terminus, near Anacreon, at the edge of the galaxy, just beyond the border of the Empire. |
In the map for Anacreon Province shown here, I imagine that the planet Terminus, just a short distance beyond the outer border of the Empire, was relatively close to the Kingdom of Anacreaon in the time of Salvor Hardin.
In my imagination, the Anacreon province was settled because it is a remnant of a dwarf galaxy that collided with our galaxy. Relatively rich in stars but far from the galactic core, Anacreon province was one of the last parts of our galaxy to be settled by human explorers.
What if?
image source |
The Origin of Ariel
Who might have been properly motivated to make the three movies? I imagine that Ariel was the Ekcolir Reality analogue of Allen Adler while Marcia was the Ekcolir Reality analogue of Martin Greenberg.
image source |
In our Reality, Allen had a connection to New York University. In the Ekcolir Reality, New York was founded in Virginia, but it also had its own version of New York University and that is where Ariel met fellow students Marcia Greenberg and Isaac Asimov.
In our Reality, Martin Greenberg was a founder of Gnome Press, the first company to publish Asimov's Foundation stories in book format. In the Ekcolir Reality, Marcia established a company called Gnome Films and recruited her old school friend, Ariel, to adapt Asimov's Foundation stories to film format.
Writing about the Bimanoid Interface in the Ekcolir Reality. |
Space Aliens
Since I never had to deal with an intellectual bully like Campbell, I've never shied away from including aliens in my fan-fiction stories that are set in the Foundation Fictional Universe.
View towards our galaxy from the dwarf galaxy of the fain. source |
The fain lurk in the background of TPTT, but Ariel has always had "visions" of the fain and faith in the idea that they might provide a counter-balance to the alien Fru'wu. In TPTT, there are fain-human hybrids secretly working on Earth to mitagate some of the problems caused by advanced Fru'wu technology.
Theurgency
Grean the Kac'hin |
In TPTT, during her entire life, Ariel has been provided with "memories" of her future life by her replicoid. When a copy of Ariel is teleported into the Hierion Domain, she does not assume that Grean the Kac'hin is some kind of god. However, through her access to advanced Huaoshy technology, Grean can travel through time and View possible alternative futures. Thus, from the perspective of some Earthlings, Grean does have seemingly god-like powers and she's in the business of using the tricks of time travel to alter events on Earth.
Dani |
1972 In an act of
About this time, the on-going neuroscience research in Asimov's laboratory is getting close to the discovery that femtobot endosymbionts reside inside humans. How will this discovery change how Earthlings interact with aliens?
Petra Nicholls and Gina Hay. |
Mind Clone Network
With Gina on Earth as part of a mind clone network linking Relda to Ariel, it becomes easier for the Writers Block to send stories to the writers on Earth who are given financial support by the Foundation for Science Fiction. I'm thinking that when Asimov's research team discovers the existence of femtobot endosymbionts, that might lead to a practical application of what I previously called the "Clarke-Brunner Effect".
collaboration with the Witers Block |
In the Ekcolir Reality; a story from the Writers Block. In the Final Reality. |
The other part of TPTT remaining to be expanded upon is how the alien fain first make contact with humans in the Foundation Reality, in the time of Salvor Hardin.
Related Reading: an alternate Asimov
Next: the Foundation Reality Simulator
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